snippets

It's Sunday night, a few minutes before midnight as I start writing this. I'm exhausted, and I'm wishing I would have made my bed right after the laundry was done instead of waiting til now, because all I want to do is crawl into bed and go to sleep. I have to take birds way the heck out to Sacramento tomorrow to ship them. This'll be the second time in a month that I've shipped birds, after about a 12 year hiatus from it. (Because it's a pain in the butt, but sometimes a necessary evil). There will be one more shipment to go in one more week, and then the chicken flock will be greatly reduced, and I'm glad. Just a couple more weeks of selling eggs left this season, and OMG again this weekend someone is incapable of following the "24 hours to pay" specification. Really? REALLY? Ugh that gripes me, it's way over 48 hours now and not a peep from them.

Anyway, it's been super crazy busy, the weekend was a blur. Last week was a blur. Same with the weekend before.

On Friday I went on a tour of the Gladding McBean factory with my mom and grandpa (who had been visiting for a week). I freaking love Gladding McBean. I've been on the tour 3 times (it's for the Feats of Clay show). They manufacture ceramic sewer pipes, roof tiles, etc from local (Lincoln, CA) clay. There is a huge amount of fascinating old stuff in the factory, and I just am crazy about that place. Brings back a lot of memories of doing ceramics work in college, and yes I will admit I definitely miss sculpting!

Sewer pipes!



Walking amidst the beehive kilns (HUGE!)

This brings back memories of firing kilns! Though the ones at school were of course much smaller!

Today I made cupcakes for a baby shower/BBQ and I used a whacky frosting recipe from The Pioneer Woman's site. It's cooked. And whipped. And wonderful. But it looks weird, which might scare people. But the cupcakes are even from scratch. That's just how I roll. Super yum, as a friend of mine would say!

I've started working on sewing tablecloths for Blade Show. 8 yards of black velvet and 3 yards of cream satin. Oh my. Good thing I'm driving, I'd exceed the airline luggage weight limit just with all this darn fabric! But it'll look amazing. I wish there was a bigger table to stretch it all out on for pinning/cutting/sewing!

I was going to caption this "do these ducks look indecisive to you? They seem a little on the fence to me." and then I realized they're not really on a fence per se, just posts, but you get the idea.

Oh. Em. Gee. I am so tired.

sew I was thinking...

Did you know that September is National Sewing Month? Indeed, according to the big signs at the fabric shop that I saw today, that's the truth. Fitting.

On a whim I decided to sew a baby blanket for a friend today (well, for her baby, technically). I had a hunch there might be good sales on fabric, and I was right! Score. I figured this would be "really easy" to do. Oh my. Actually, it isn't that difficult (a flannel chenille blanket) but it's a serious pain in the butt because it involves sooooooooo much sewing, and sooooooooo much cutting. And then I ran out of thread when I was about 2/3 done with the astronomical amount of sewing I had to do. Blarg! It would be an hour trip to go into town for more, so I'll do it tomorrow. I have to go to the feed store, and I figure as long as I'm there I may as well drive all the way into town, it's sort of like combining trips. Sort of. Anyway, I hope the end result will be adorable. And oh wow, I can't sew straight. I hope my wavy lines look whimsical rather than messy! So far I vastly prefer the rag quilt process (I made one, but I can't show you for a few more months...) ;-)

Anyway, I think I'm in the process of becoming nuts about quilting. It all started a few months ago when I needed a particular fabric scrap out of the fabric drawer, and had to rummage all the way to the bottom of the drawer, and I got totally annoyed, emptied it out, sorted it by color/print/fabric type, and organized it into bags. I still can't believe I did that. "What are you going to do with all that?" my mom said. I replied, "I'm going to make a quilt." She laughed. I made one (a rag quilt). She was amazed. And it's kinda snowballed from there. I ogled the pretty quilts at the fair. One of my fellow bloggers is taking a quilting class and I'm sort of drooling with anticipation to see what she makes, and sorta wish I would have thought to take a class at the same time (you know, like safety in numbers or something). I decided to buy a book. It cost as much as one class session would cost. I want to learn more about it in the secrecy of my own space, where nobody has to watch me mess things up. Maybe then I'd take a class. Except it's another expense (I don't need more expenses) and it's another drain on my time (that's also problematic). Hmmm.

But I also don't believe until waiting until retirement to do interesting things. And I totally want to make a huge awesome quilt.

See, I have this little fantasy. It's evening, I'm back from a sunset trail ride with a view of jagged mountains in the distance, maybe I've just eaten cheesecake, maybe I'm watching Star Wars, and I'm snuggled under my beautiful hand-made quilt with my hunky cowboy lovemuffin as the chilly evening breeze blows across the prairie.... And then the whole thing screeches to a halt, because I'm obviously missing quite a few of the essential ingredients to that fantasy.

But I could make the quilt. And eat cheesecake. And watch Star Wars.

Oh speaking of such things, there were TWO count them two bolts of hunky-half-naked-cowboy fabric at the store today. They are mocking me. They call to me, they beckon me, they challenge me to figure out how to make *something* out of them. Hmmm.